Wow, really? You know, you could replace the ninja turtles characters with anything and it would still be the same show. The ninja turtles aren’t the centerpiece of the show, its the “mutastones”, the combining of the turtles to form a super turtle, its the same damn formula as power rangers and the like. I mean, imagine the Thundercats, they were given legendary, oh I don’t know, “thunderstones”. They can mutate into bigger, stronger, faster, versions of themselves. But Mum-Ra found the evil “darkstone”. He mutates into a bigger, stronger, faster version as well. Oh, but don’t forget! Lion-o’s sword of omens can combine all of the thundercats together into a megathundercat! Let’s tie it all into the original series by saying Lion-o learned about the thunderstone during his time in the book of omens, he has a map and stuff, and the first 3 episodes deal with finding the thunderstones.

Sorry but this is like the japanese spiderman, pure crap. Thats what happens when japaneses mess with western cartoon and viceversa, they just fuck it up. Japaneses changed Ninja Turtles into a combination between Power Rangers, Pokemon and even Saint Seiya in order to catch the attention of the Japanese audience but the final result just sucks balls.

I actually watched a subbed version of both episodes a few years back, and they were absolutely terrible, but, like a horrific car accident, you can’t help but watch. I was amused that the characters were pretty on-model with the US cartoon… except for Shredder. What the hell happened there? And why the hell does Krang sound like Meowth’s Japanese counterpart?

The only saving grace is the “so bad it’s good” theme song, which upon hearing it again, had managed to worm its way into my brain to bounce around for a few months.

oh god…..that was HORRIBLE! I HATE reading subtitles for the entire show! I can’t fucking stand it when things aren’t in English for more than maybe 45 seconds. I want to WATCH whatever it is I’m watching, not read the fucking dialog script! ………the fact that it’s a TMNT anime is also kinda weird.

NO NO absolutly no! i we all the world knew the turtles just as they are those are not the turtles we know those are powerrangersupersentaimanganinjaturtle fuck up! those type of animated series are something diferent,if i want to see an anime i will see onepiece and if i want to see turtles i will see turtles.

I love anime, but this turtles’s anime is really really weird. I remembered the japanese Spider-Man. He had a giant mecha “Leopaldon”. And the most weird ever is the man who sings the opening theme: Hironobu Kageyama!!!

Maybe I’m getting a little upset, but what was wrong with “regular” Ninja Turtles? The duplicated animation of “regular” characters looks good. In fact, it looks way better than the US version with all of its animation mistakes. It looks so good that this series could have been an awesome addition to the Turtles series. But mother of God, the “Super” turtles look like they’re cosplaying as Wolverine in a really bad anime. Rocksteady turns green? WHY??? And they merge their powers like cheap Power Rangers impersonators, because as we all know, no kid in America had a single favorite turtle that they liked to see in the limelight. Nope, they probably couldn’t even tell the turtles apart. So it’s perfectly reasonable to just keep merging the turtles together so that the writers and animators only have to keep track of one character. Krang sounds like Mr. Bill and says that he has the “personality of a kitten.” Shredder is understandably confused by this remark (as are the viewers), but Krang never bothers to explain. Great, now every time that I think of Krang, I’m going to think of kittens. And WHY IS THERE A GODDAMN FAIRY??? Did the Ninja Turtles really need the K-Mart version of Na’vi to explain everything?

That theme song is horrendous. It doesn’t fit with the grimy yet youthful theme of the turtles at all and just screams “forgettably generic anime that no American will ever watch.” “Go go Turtles!’ What? “Kicks go Boom Boom!” You’ve got to be kidding me. “Our hearts combine and the miracle fusion body is awakened!” Okay, maybe there’s a translation error or two, but that seems to be exactly what’s happening onscreen. I’m guessing that Yoko Kanno wasn’t the composer for this one. And it looks like crap too. It’s like an episode of the Turtles got thrown into a blender with the most low budget rip-offs of Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z that the producers could find.

Yeah, this is pretty embarrassing, but not anywhere near as bad Operation Blue Line.

Maybe I’m getting a little upset, but what was wrong with “regular” Ninja Turtles? The duplicated animation of “regular” characters looks good. In fact, it looks way better than the US version with all of its animation mistakes. It looks so good that this series could have been an awesome addition to the Turtles series. But mother of God, the “Super” turtles look like they’re cosplaying as Wolverine in a really bad anime. Rocksteady turns green? WHY??? And they merge their powers like cheap Power Rangers impersonators, because as we all know, no kid in America had a single favorite turtle that they liked to see in the limelight. Nope, they probably couldn’t even tell the turtles apart. So it’s perfectly reasonable to just keep merging the turtles together so that the writers and animators only have to keep track of one character. Krang sounds like Mr. Bill and says that he has the “personality of a kitten.” Shredder is understandably confused by this remark (as are the viewers), but Krang never bothers to explain. Great, now every time that I think of Krang, I’m going to think of kittens. And WHY IS THERE A GODDAMN FAIRY??? Did the Ninja Turtles really need the K-Mart version of Tinkerbell to explain everything?

That theme song is horrendous. It doesn’t fit with the grimy yet youthful theme of the turtles at all and just screams “forgettably generic anime that no American will ever watch.” “Go go Turtles!’ What? “Kicks go Boom Boom!” You’ve got to be kidding me. “Our hearts combine and the miracle fusion body is awakened!” Okay, maybe there’s a translation error or two, but that seems to be exactly what’s happening onscreen. I’m guessing that Yoko Kanno wasn’t the composer for this one. And it looks like crap too. It’s like an episode of the Turtles got thrown into a blender with the most low budget rip-offs of Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z that the producers could find.

Yeah, this is pretty embarrassing, but not anywhere near as bad Operation Blue Line.

Oh my god! I always wanted to know what do you think or at least know about this peace of crap. And of course, some nerdfact: it a commercial for some toys from Japan and… yeah… that’s it. Also i always thought that’s Russian version of Crang voice is worst, but know, i’m really glad for translation. Speaking of which, in some groups in Russia, this shit Mutastone is mem. It’s like: Why i failed my exams.. .well of course, MUTASTONE ! So anyway, do a review of this, please. Thanks, you’re an asshole.

Wow. I’m speechless. James, you and Mike dug up a real gem here. Obviously this is a completely absurd take on the original TMNT cartoon, but while I usually scoff at other imitations and remakes, I couldn’t help but watch the whole thing. It sure is ridiculous, and yet, there’s a lot to be said here for how this represents how some in Japan reacted to the whole Turtles craze. There are plenty of jabs and tips of the hat to the relationships between Shredder and Krang as well as between the Turtles that are surprising to see, and some of them are actually pretty funny since they sometimes break the fourth wall and speak what might be on some people’s minds when it comes to wondering how Shredder deals with working with Krang or how the other Turtles tolerate Michaelangelo’s sense of humor. It’s also interesting to see which character models this Japanese animator stuck to pretty closely (i.e. April, Krang, etc.) and which ones they opted to take liberties with (i.e. Shredder).

I’m stunned that you guys posted this WITHOUT a commentary, though. James, if you and Mike don’t get together and rip this one apart, you’re missing a phenomenal opportunity.

I can’t believe people are actually hating on this. It’s an OVA called Mutant Turtles: Chōjin Densetsu-hen. There are two episodes. If you don’t like Japanese anime then I wouldn’t expect you to like this, but they did an excellent job at retaining the look of the original show, which by the way was already animated by Japanese artists if you couldn’t tell. The animation was very good and it’s a shame they didn’t make a full anime series, but this was only meant to be an OVA to go with the 1987 TV series. Japan was already watching a dubbed version of our cartoon.

The TMNT OVA designs actually come from a toy line from America. The Super mutant and Metal mutant toy lines would then become apart of the TMNT story line in the manga adaptation of the popular 80’s cartoon series. After the popularity of the manga the series hit it’s peak in the TMNT OVA but no others episodes were created besides the 2 based off the 2 toylines.

If you want someone to blame I suggest the American toy designers, The Japanese OVA producers were just trying to make a story out of the nonsensical toylines. Frankly I would have liked to see one based off the Mutant Masters toyline.

Oh god, I just noticed something!
I did know this for quite some time (I think I even mentioned it here on cinemassacre before) but I only now realized that the person singing the themesong is Kageyama Hironobu, who also did the songs for Dragonball Z and Saint Saiya.

Wait, they turned the Neutrinos into fairies? And then the turtles what? And the bad guys what? And Saint Mutation what? Something about Voltron? Krang just said he had the personality of a kitten? I think my inner child just had a brain aneurysm. There are some things that humans just aren’t made to deal with. This is one of them. This thing is having a drink with a Great Old One. Thanks James, thanks for almost killing my inner child.

@ misterhongkongbuffet:
I agree on the absurdity of this…err, OAV, but we don’t see the Japanese complaining about the Power Rangers series or the Transformers movies, right? The least we could do is give them the same courtesy by being forgiving of their “bastardization” of a beloved franchise. LOL

@ yamina-chan:
Unfortunately, not even the so-called “prince of anime songs” (that’s what’s said in the Super Robot Wars OS booklet) can make a shitty song sound even remotely cool. But yeah, it does sound like him.